


penny for your thoughts

by themoonisgay



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Eventual Enjolras/Grantaire, M/M, Pining Grantaire, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-01
Updated: 2016-09-01
Packaged: 2018-08-12 08:13:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7927303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themoonisgay/pseuds/themoonisgay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>“Penny for your thoughts?” Enjolras says, and it sounds more like a greeting than a demand, as natural and expected as breathing. Grantaire tries to act frustrated, but he is tired and it is late and there’s just too much fuzz around his vision to think clearly. </i><br/> <br/>  <i>“Tired,” he mumbles, and Enjolras nods, and it’s enough for now.</i></p><p>It's a game to him- pulling Grantaire's heartstrings taught and letting him teeter on the edge. Grantaire can't say he doesn't enjoy it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	penny for your thoughts

“Penny for your thoughts?” Enjolras asks, an inkling of summer wind coiling against his cheeks. They are sitting on the steps outside the Musain, a cigarette poised in between the crevice of his fingers, jaunted upward. The heat had dampened their morning- a plane of whirlish warmth that descended quite unwelcomely onto their streets, deep and sluggish- and left their shoulders hunched downward. It seems to draw lines on their faces.  

“No,” Grantaire turns away, and that is all that is said.

*

The bartenders shaking canisters or arguing with unreliable alcoholics are all too familiar to Grantaire. He sees them almost every night- a whiskey in exchange for a five, a wink in exchange for a raised eyebrow. He sits at the same stool, nurses the same drink with what a stranger would call restraint, but what he knows is simple laziness. His fingertip captures the straw he always requests (the bartender had laughed when he first asked for one, but his stonecold features quickly made him lose his grin), swirling the ice around in circles as he stares at the customers around him. A woman loudly recalling her job evaluation to a disinterested friend, a trio of college boys all grinding against one another on the makeshift dance floor, a man staring at the floor as if it were ancient hieroglyphics waiting to be deciphered. All lost people finding a purpose in Thursday night drink specials. The crack on the wooden bar is the perfect distance from Grantaire’s seat for him to stroke it back and forth, mindlessly. It all seems so methodical, the different faces, the same drink, the repetitive music. 

The method is therapeutic, in a demented way.

“Penny for your thoughts?” he whispers, to no one in particular, and no one hears him. Just as well.

*

Enjolras suggests a trip to the Louvre. It all began well, with Courfeyrac managing not to cause a car accident on the drive there- Combeferre had read off all the directions at once, a drawl in his voice, as if Courfeyrac was just humoring him ( _ And really, who needs directions to get to the Louvre anyway?,  _ he had wondered)- It only took him three wrong turns and forty minutes, after all, which was better than anyone had expected.

The upside down pyramid stands daunting in the museum’s lobby, refracting light in waves onto their faces, the floors, the walls. The colors are effervescent, feeding off each other, dancing in jolted breaths. A flicker of red here, a flash of blue there. Enjolras’ face seems to capture the most of the light, as if he were standing in the eye of a kaleidoscope, all sharp geometrics and glinting colors. He is blinding, like the sun a masochist can’t look away from.

“Penny for a thoughts?” he raises an eyebrow, the yellow switching to a tempered green, glowing in pulses.

Grantaire diverts his eyes. The floor tiles act like mirrors, and rainbows shoot forward. “Fuck off,” he mumbles, and Enjolras walks away.

“What kind of metal do you think that’s made of?” Feuilly asks, looking at the sculpture, clueless. Grantaire gives him a swift reply. The rest of the day is leaden, leaving everyone sore and contempt, bogged down by silence and irritated backtalk. He paints until dawn.

*

The dying embers of their late night/early morning bonfire flicker like broken fairy lights, bright and swirling, fire curving into itself and blossoming outward at sporadic intervals. He can feel the flames dancing in his eyes, as if his eyesight is tertiary and he is staring at a mirror, hints of light in the veil between reality and his mind. Maybe the whiskey is just getting to him.

Enjolras is lying on the grass, hair splayed across the ground and the fire illuminating his sharp jawline. He’s braiding threads of dandelions together, a futile attempt at a bracelet that will never sit still on his wrist.

“Penny for your thoughts?” Enjolras asks, in between grunts and tosses of ugly, knotted stems into the wooden ash. The smell of burnt flowers drifts all too pleasantly into Grantaire’s sinuses.

“I don’t see a penny,” Grantaire yawns, and falls asleep shortly afterwards.

*

He is lying with his head in the nook of his crossed arms, leaning on an empty table at the Musain. Bahorel had left his bag on the chair across from him before he approached Enjolras about wage equality or whatever they were conniving about. It was always the same anyway- redundant head nods, low mumbling, the crinkling sound of them shuffling papers around- that their actual topics of interests merged together like watercolors, precise and flowing and at a deranged level of surrealism. His eyelids had just begun to close, draping over his vision in content darkness, when the ringing of a coin landing and spinning to a halt on the tabletop catapults him out of his reverie. His head shoots upward as his eyes shoot daggers at Enjolras.

“What?” he demands, voice groggy and cracking and tight around the edges.

“Here’s your penny,” Enjolras says, as if it’s the most obvious conclusion in the world. Indeed, a bronze disk of copper lies near the ring of water Bahorel’s drink left in its wake. The profile of a stoic looking man, round features meeting jagged lines, is pressed into the metal. He looks tired.

“And here are your thoughts,” Grantaire easily replies, holding up a middle finger with a wide smile. Enjolras huffs and turns back to the others, and Grantaire flicks the penny to the floor. It clatters on the tiles, but he can’t bring himself to care.

It is only later, when he is in bed and staring at his blank ceiling, eyes foggy and heavy and unwilling to shut, that he wonders where Enjolras had obtained American currency. He decides he does not want to know, that he does not care, but he chews on his lips for far too long after he comes to this conclusion, and he is wary that he does not mean it. Sleep does not come easily that night.

*

“I’m turning twenty-two next week,” Jehan announces, between checking the oven and tossing people bottles of beer. Grantaire is sitting on a stool at his breakfast bar, trying to decipher the scrawls of bad handwriting plastering his fridge. Something about groceries, or Tuesday morning classes, or a lab report due soon. The drawing of a cat is nice, though, all scribbles and blotches of smeared ink around the eyes. Someone woops from the couch, a cylindrical sound that carries itself off all the walls. His ears are too tired to connect the voice to a name.

“Cool,” Combeferre shrugs at the same time that Bossuet insists they have a cerebral picnic.

Their chatter fills the room, bouncing around in waves, lulls of whispers punctuated by intervals of passionate, drunken volume. Grantaire gets into a joust of puns with Courfeyrac at some point, plucking rhymes from their brains that only make sense, let alone merit laughter, when they’ve got four bottles of Jehan’s supermarket beers in their systems. Courfeyrac makes a particularly bad one about carrots, and even though his vision is blurring on its edges, his brain fogging with warmth, his movements turning clumsier and clumsier, Grantaire has to call bullshit. Courfeyrac feigns offense and stalks back to Bahorel, a gasp of disbelief marking his exit.

Grantaire turns back to his beer. The alcohol is room temperature- Jehan had run out of ice half an hour into their night, with Feuilly near fainting in exaggerated dramatics while Bossuet merely shrugged and accepted the lukewarm drink- and trickles down his throat soothingly, leaving a trail of heat in its wake. It keeps him grounded amidst all the noise.

Enjolras jumps onto the stool next to him, grabbing the drink right out of Grantaire’s hand and taking a swig. Grantaire tries not to notice the way his Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows, tries to look stern and disapproving instead, but his eyebrows furrow and contract and leave tension in his forehead that he cannot get rid of.

Enjolras takes one look at him and chuckles, a hearty one filled with tiny voice cracks. It reminds him of a campfire, warm and musky and crackling, sharp around the edges and sonorous in between. Grantaire hates it, he decides.

“Penny for your thoughts?” Enjolras asks, sliding a penny near Grantaire’s paint-stained fingers, the grain barely tickling the underside of his pinkie finger. Abraham Lincoln’s face is covered in splotches of rust, green and russet brown, a true relic of 1972.

Grantaire pockets the coin, but doesn’t say a word. He instead grabs his drink back from Enjolras, and if their fingers linger for far longer than necessary  _ (pin-prickling sparks of his nerves sending shockwaves to his brain, screaming ‘now, now, now!’, but Grantaire has always been a master of restraint)  _ before Enjolras lets go of his tight grip, well, he’s not going to mention it first. He’s not going to mention it at all. The beer is bitter and leaves liquid smoke blazing inside his mouth, a substitute to intimacy that he has grown to appreciate. He gives Enjolras a small smile, at least, faint as the crescent moons on his fingernails, and pats Jehan on the back before heading out.

He knows the beer at home is better, well-crafted and layered with flavors and not purchased on a bargain deal (he never really has the funds to afford much, but he always manages to scrape by with quality alcohol, for it’s what sends him to sleep and wakes him up, what pushes him and pulls him back, and he has grown to need it like air), but he cannot stomach it. He heads to bed light-headed, his mind swimming in blurring memories of the night, all muted voices and greying colors, completely out of focus and out of reach. Enjolras’ face fills his vision, a phantom ghost of pale skin and blue lips, before sleep envelops him. He wakes up the next morning in a cold sweat, shivering.

*

The Musain is near empty on weekday mornings, giving Grantaire the perfect vantage point to sketch without worrying about his friends’ meaningless quarrels. Their next meeting is in two days, and besides a woman swirling coffee around at a nook in the corner, the place is deserted. His sketchbook lies open face on the bar, a blank slate for him to massage the ticks out of his mind. He can already feel the stress evaporating like dew on a hot day.

His hand is mindlessly leaving lightweight curls on the page, charcoal scribbles that somehow turn into the shape of a head. He subconsciously engraves sharper features on its face, gives it a mass of curly hair and an aristocratic nose and crinkling eyes that stare directly forward. Looking back at the drawing, Grantaire can do nothing but swear under his breath and turn the page. The vase of flowers nearby can’t possibly deter his concentration, so he gets to work capturing it on paper.

Madame Houcheloup stands a few feet nearby, an amicable distance for a frequent customer, polishing glasses. Her face is slack and disinterested, wrinkles pulling her lips into a small frown, although she’s humming a pleasant tune. Grantaire adds in harmonies every once in awhile, the hums deep and vibrating off his molars.

He never really considered himself much of a singer.

“Penny for your thoughts?” he asks her, and pushes the finished sketch of her hibiscuses forward. She nods pleasantly, and the tune switches to a more jovial key, with even a few whistles embedded every now and then. He’ll accept it.

*

The afternoon weather is perfect for their picnic. They’re near the pond at Parc Monceau, a pool of trudging green water that’s bordered by bright flowers and the decaying semicircle of ancient Greek columns. They leave striped shadows on the ground ahead of them and send a mirage of vacillating reflections in the water. The reflection glistens alongside the sunlight; it’s soothing to look at but Grantaire is forced to look away after a while, the steady flickering unnerving. It’s not unlike all beauty: vivid and enthralling and impossible to look at for long periods of time.

He can’t help that a familiar face comes to mind at that thought.

At least the sun is out and the birds flutter past, leaving wisps of melodies in their wake. Courfeyrac is handing out sandwiches, and Combeferre is smoothing out the blanket for everyone, and a small pile of variously wrapped presents sits near Jehan’s lap. Grantaire had pulled together enough tips to buy him a moleskine notebook, and it’s hidden underneath layers of poorly taped newspapers. At least the card is legible, he grimaces.

Enjolras sits down next to him on the blanket, folds his legs promiscuously, gives Grantaire a little smile, and lights a cigarette. The smoke gets in Grantaire’s eyes, but he can’t bring himself to move away. Especially when their knees are almost touching.

“Penny for your thoughts?” Enjolras asks, after Jehan finishes opening his gifts and their terrible rendition of  _ Bon Anniversaire _ gets cut short by laughter. He’s snagging chips from the bowl in the center, popping them in his mouth with a surely practiced ease. How he makes eating greasy finger food seem elegant is beyond Grantaire, and irritates him to an irrational extent. He can feel his knuckles whitening.

Grantaire digs through his back pocket, scavenging around for the penny he had left there the week before, and is glad he only wears a few pairs of pants. He holds it between his calloused thumb and index before pressing it into the skin right below Enjolras’ shorts. He hopes it leaves an imprint.

“Penny for  _ your  _ thoughts,” he challenges, his voice snide and sharp and as scorching as the orange glow at the tip of Enjolras’ cigarette.

Enjolras bites his lip, but gives in, and tells Grantaire about his morning and his thoughts on subsidized welfare and how his new affinity to Erik Satie’s music bleeds into his sleep schedule. It’s a tirade of mundane topics stampeding from his mouth, but Grantaire realizes that once he’s opened the waterworks of Enjolras’ crescendoing thoughts, it’s nearly impossible to stop. He realizes he doesn’t mind, and lets the words wash over his senses.

*

Enjolras’ living space is vast and spacious and layered with strange nick-nacks, plants scattered across surfaces, dense biographies stacked atop each other. It’s the level of clutter that teeters on messy, although Grantaire assumes it’s a chaos with precisioned method. It must be; It’s Enjolras. Either way, the far corners of the room are connected by a sheet of glass- a window that fills the entirety of the wall and leaves no interpretation of the Paris streets to the imagination. The cascade of far away windows switching from dark to illuminated as the early risers begin their days, the sheet of purple in between the the low-perched sun and dawn’s blanket of night sky. It’s ethereal.

It is perhaps what Grantaire appreciates most about the apartment, besides its inhabitant.

Enjolras is fixing breakfast in his open kitchen, because of course he is; it’s five in the morning and that’s what he does. At least the coffee he gave Grantaire is hot, a dry heat that seeps through the ceramic confines of the mug and warms his palms. The aroma drifts upward, bitter and refreshing, as the orange glow of the city leaves sharp shadows on his face.

“Penny for your thoughts?” Enjolras asks from his perch in front of the stove-top. Grantaire regrets waking up at such an ungodly hour for him, regrets taking the early train to inevitably be asked the same exact question.

“Will you stop asking that?” he asks with his croaky morning voice, pointedly standing with his back to him.

“Will you start answering it?” Enjolras’ voice flows too smoothly for the time of day.

Grantaire heaves a sigh as his eyes flutter shut.

*

“What’s up between you and Enjolras?” Combeferre sits down across from him. The Musain is dense with arguments and typing and furrowed brows as they plan the next protest, and Grantaire has been trying to avoid the worst of it from his seat in the corner. Grantaire purses his lips, staring at Combeferre with practiced vigor.

Bossuet’s mouth drops, a “Wait, what?!” penetrating the silence like a needle through the thin wall of a balloon, sharp and puncturing and always on the edge of causing a burst. Leave it to Bossuet to be oblivious towards blatant tension.

“Nothing,” Grantaire smiles, too widely, and returns his focus to the brimming pint of whiskey in front of him.

Enjolras catches his eye from across the room, and Grantaire nearly chokes on the alcohol halfway down his throat when his vision zooms in on the quick and nonchalant wink he sent Grantaire’s way. His mind can’t help but replaying it, forward and backward and distorted, like old film reels projected on a church window. Maybe it was just the glare of the lights, or alcohol-induced delusions, or his eyesight short-circuiting.

Maybe it was just.

*

The alleyway behind his local bar is the perfect spot to fall apart, Grantaire decides, on a Friday night (or the numb beginning of a Saturday morning, as if time mattered at all when he was grasping at strings, pulling, tugging, scraping) after Enjolras dangered on too close to him, all invigorated and drunk and sweaty. The lights of the pub danced beautifully on his jutted features, and Grantaire despised every inch, from the triangles exaggerating the depth of his cheekbones to the stripes across his forehead.

The cold air is a good escape, a breath of cool breeze that flows through his lungs like ice water and cleanses him. He can feel himself sobering up, feel the stardust at his fingertips retreat.

His hands scrape up against the brick wall behind him, and he knows his skin is tearing, but it’s a necessary amount of friction and pain to keep his body from floating upward, keep his mind from drifting. He feels like smoke, hovering in suspense, moving in waves and spontaneous rhythms with the sway of the wind and the heat of the joint.

Enjolras forces one in between his knuckles, leaning against the brick only a foot away, as if he were patiently waiting for him. Waiting for him to  _ what, _ exactly, was a wonder as enigmatic as his background, his motives, his kindling personality.

“Penny for your thoughts?” Enjolras says, and it sounds more like a greeting than a demand, as natural and expected as breathing. Grantaire tries to act frustrated, but he is tired and it is late and there’s just too much fuzz around his vision to think clearly.

“Tired,” he mumbles, and Enjolras nods, and it’s enough for now.

*

The church bells ring, a hollow, bellowing jumble of sound, twelve times in a row, as the sun peeks above the Parisian sky.

It is noon, and Grantaire is alone, sitting at a deserted patio in the back of a local café. The ice in his coffee is melting, muting the taste of his bitter dark roast. It swims down his throat anyway.

Feuilly finally sits down across from him, drops his bag at his feet and gives him a brisk smile, and it is remarkable how much it takes for Grantaire to resist chastising his arrival time.

“What's up?”

“Got tired of painting for the day after I screwed up the same canvas three times,” Grantaire lets the lie roll off his tongue. The paintings were fine, really- way too fine- reminiscent of blond hair and a blinding smile. His face kept appearing from the tip of his paintbrush, even after he layered the image with white paint and started over. Fresh canvas was getting all too expensive, and Grantaire didn't particularly want to keep that lying around.

The lilac paint dried on his fingertips, and chipping the chalky dust with his nails soothes his nerves.

Feuilly nods, and starts talking about his shift at work, about filing tax returns, about violas and errands and lost keys, and Grantaire tries to listen.

“Penny for your thoughts?” Grantaire asks, after Feuilly runs out of news like a dying steam engine squeaking into the station.

Feuilly laughs, and stares him directly in the eyes, and his glare is crystalline and daunting. He looks tired, the lines in his face becoming more pronounced, like he just realized he was called in as a distraction and nothing more.

“Make a move,” he breathes.

*

The walk home from the pub Grantaire occasionally covers shifts at is long, to say the least. A good half hour on a good day, but he’ll admit the fresh air seeps into his veins rather quickly, and it’s not a bad sort of rejuvenation. It always feels longer walking back, when it’s one in the morning and the cobblestone streets are illuminated by fluorescent street lights, than when he’s walking to work and the daylight frames the heavy rush of pedestrians, the trenchcoats and high heels and three pieces.

The people in the early midst of mornings, however, always seem better adjusted to Grantaire. There’s a sort of kinship, he admires, as he heads back to his apartment, with the occasional passersby. The sort that glows with familiarity, like a voice screaming,  _ “Hey, we’re in the same boat. What’s your poison?” _ in every passing glance, every faint smile, every matched step. The night brings chills to his bones, but the people warm his heart, in a figurative sense. Always figurative.

He passes a man smoking against a wall, and they make eye contact, and he has an opening. A window to offer the night, offer his number at the very least, but the man takes a once-over of his lanky body, and turns his head away.

Because of course he does. Not all strangers fulfill his fantastical idea of nighttime camaraderie.

Grantaire closes his eyes- not for long enough to run into a wandering pedestrian, or a street lamp, or a stray cat- but long enough to recover from the rejection. It’s a check-up he finds himself doing frequently, and he reminds himself to strike another notch on his wall when he gets home. If he doesn’t pass out first.

“Penny for your thoughts?” he whispers to the dark air, wispy and bristling, and it replies with a howl of wind that sends concave echoes to his ears. It mimics the human voice all too well.

*

“We’re getting nowhere,” Enjolras announces, with the bland disposition of a tired cubicle worker standing in front of a diagonal sales chart, all zigzags and steep drops.

They are at the library, a lofty and rustic one near the third tier, with wooden fixtures and dusty lounge spaces. It is stuffy and well-worn and brimming with potential, if Grantaire was given a paintbrush and a few sheets of blueprints. A mural on the far wall, a fireplace near the couches. But it is as it is.

The mahogany table they’re sitting at is flooded with encyclopedias, reference books, and stacks of loose leaf papers with curved edges. Evidence of a long afternoon, caffeine-injected finesse, and countless paper cuts.

Grantaire’s fingers pause midway through a page flip, the rough edge of the paper pliant, and nods.

“It is difficult to find substantial evidence against the permit licensing scandals,” he drawls out.

“No,” Enjolras says, with fervor and a petulant shake of his head, all curls bouncing and eyebrows furrowing and lips tightening. He manages discomfort with ease. “That’s not what I meant,” Enjolras adds, his voice lighter, shying away for perhaps the first time since Grantaire met him. Enjolras does not speak quietly. He does not retract volume. He only grows more intense, more serious, more passionate. He only blossoms like a white star in the flurry of a nebula, dancing in waves and forming endless constellations- patterns and lines and shapes that no one else would ever notice- and Grantaire has always been his astronomist. But he does not know who to react to implosions, and it wears him thin.

“Then what do you mean?” Grantaire forces out, neck stiff and hands motionless.

“I mean,” Enjolras grips onto his hair and pulls, and Grantaire’s eyes shoot away immediately, “that _ we’re  _ not getting anywhere.”

Grantaire gulps. He knew this was coming. The nick in between his shoulder blades had warned him, had tightened his muscles and shot waves of pain to the skin behind his ears, and he should have listened to it. Should have grabbed his bag and fled, or said he forgot he was working this night, or feigned a heart attack and had Enjolras panic into forgetting this ever happened.

But he did not, and now he has to face the consequences.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Grantaire rolls his eyes, and hopes he sounds truthful. The tornado hurling through his chest can wait, if he can make it through the rest of this conversation alive.

Enjolras smiles, a tiny one that gently pulls on his dimples, and Grantaire feels queasy, “But you do.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Yes, you really do.”

“Care to enlighten me then?” Grantaire huffs, blowing a tuff of his fringe out of his eyes with the perseverance of a man on the brink of denial. And he really is. He’s standing on the edge of the cliff, or waiting for a grenade to detonate, or feeling his hand twitch almost reflexively around the trigger of a loaded gun.

“Penny for your thoughts, first,” Enjolras insists, and it’s incredible how easily he diverts the focus of the conversation, how casually he can prevent and procrastinate a disaster all at once.

“My  _ thoughts,”  _ Grantaire snarls, lips sore from biting them and jaw clenched, “are that this is stupid, and I don’t want to talk about this, and that I should go home.”

“With me,” the bastard replies, and it’s the breaking of a dam, or the blast of the grenade, or a man standing on the precipice of the abyss and only recalling horrid memories. It’s a revelation, it’s a revolution. It’s the Big Bang, sending shockwaves of light throughout the universe, coiling through space and time, stardust ablaze at the fingertips of sonic thunder, a blaze of heat and warmth and unadulterated  _ life. _

“Fine!” his body speaks for him, following the trails of sweat and the pin-prickling jolts of electricity hidden beneath his skin. His brain feels tired, and ignored, but everything else is sparkling and alive.

“Fine,” Enjolras retaliates, and then they are running out of the dusty building, patenting licenses be damned, heading straight for his rusty old convertible. The inside is cramped and smells of cheap cigarettes, and Enjolras’ keys are planted into the ignition before his hands can even begin their journey up the driver’s thighs, clutching at his jeans and palming for warmth.

Enjolras closes his eyes, breathes deep, and moans, and it sends everything downward, turns potential energy into kinetic, like tidal waves that toss and turn with the grasp of the moon. It is metamorphic, cathartic, and leaves Grantaire wanting more.

Enjolras brushes his hands away, and brings the car into drive, and then they’re speeding past stop signs, intersections, taking alleyways to avoid trafficking signals. Grantaire has never seen Enjolras drive with such disregard, such precisioned risk, and the recklessness is only adding to the quickening pumps of blood rampaging through his body.

They arrive at Enjolras’ building in record time, and Enjolras all but forces him up against the wall of the elevator, pressing a number and letting his hands roam all over Grantaire’s body, kneading into pressure points and grabbing at his skin.

Grantaire’s head tilts back, a tiny sound erupting from his throat, when Enjolras reaches his hair and gives it a tug.

His teeth meet Grantaire’s neck, grazing against his Adam’s apple and biting at his collarbone, leaving marks at the junction of his shoulders, and Grantaire has never considered himself a religious man, but he is in the presence of God.

The elevator rings and Enjolras pulls him by the front of his shirt to his doorstep, scrambling for his keys as Grantaire presses his erection sound against his leg, and for some reason or another, Enjolras is short-circuiting, hands shaking and eyes dilating. He finally finds his keys, holds them between trembling hands and unlocks the door, and Grantaire has to laugh.

Enjolras was never jittery. He held himself together with cool composure, all his movements deliberate and precise. It’s fascinating what Grantaire discovers he can do to him.

Their lips meet as the door shuts, echoing through the hallway with hurried force, and it is the white noise behind the screen, the starlight glinting in the distance, the turning of the planets on their axises. Their lips slam into each other, and then they are racing, rushing, grasping at hair and shirts and arms, forcing their lips together in the reunion of awakened gods. It is wet, and messy, and could not have been any more perfect.

“Penny for your thoughts?” Enjolras mumbles with a deep gravel in his voice, low and husky and completely unheard of, and it rouses a beam of fire within his belly. It doesn’t help that he’s plays with Grantaire’s bottom lip, biting and licking and making him feel numb and full of energy all at once.

_ “More,” _ Grantaire gasps, and it is finally, finally enough.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Let me know if you noticed any errors


End file.
